Gov. John Hickenlooper proposed placing the state's management of wildfires and other disasters under a single command Monday, after nearly two decades of lobbying by an advocacy organization for such a change.

The proposal comes after the Lower North Fork fire in Jefferson County killed three people and burned nearly two dozen homes last month when the embers of a state-lit controlled burn flared March 26.

Hickenlooper said the shift — which would place the firefighting and controlled-burn responsibilities of the Colorado Forest Service, as well as the entire state Division of Emergency Management, under the command of the Colorado Department of Public Safety — would improve the state's response to events that threaten lives.

"We want to have it in one place, with an agency that is used to dealing with situations where minutes matter," Hickenlooper said.

The change would need legislative approval.

It was another deadly wildfire — 1994's South Canyon fire above Glenwood Springs, which killed 14 firefighters — that prompted the Colorado State Fire Chiefs Association to argue the state's wildfire response should be streamlined.

Paul Cooke, the organization's executive director, said the association two years later began pushing for a unified wildfire mobilization and command structure — something Hickenlooper said would have helped in the Lower North Fork fire response.

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"There needs to be a single, statewide plan for emergency response, which is accepted by both state and local officials," the association wrote in a 1997 report. "... Colorado's fire service is less prepared and less able than it should be to respond to large-scale disasters."

Tony Frank — president of Colorado State University, which currently oversees the State Forest Service and its wildfire duties — said he supports the plan.

Cooke, who stood alongside Hickenlooper and Frank at a news conference announcing the proposal, said bureaucracy and lack of interest stopped the changes from being adopted earlier.

"We still, to this day, have separate systems for mobilization of resources," Cooke said. "If you have a tornado tomorrow, you have a different system than if you have a wildfire. We want one system."